AI and robotics find hidden signatures of Parkinson’s disease

Credit: CC0 Public Domain

A new study from the NYSCF Research Institute successfully found new cellular hallmarks of Parkinson’s disease by creating and profiling over a million images of skin cells from a cohort of 91 patients and healthy controls.

The study is published in Nature Communications and was conducted by Marc Berndl et al.

The study leveraged NYSCF’s vast repository of patient cells and state-of-the-art robotic system—The NYSCF Global Stem Cell Array—to profile images of millions of cells from 91 Parkinson’s patients and healthy controls.

The images were fed into an unbiased, artificial intelligence–driven image analysis pipeline, identifying image features specific to patient cells that could be used to distinguish them from healthy controls.

These artificial intelligence methods can determine what patient cells have in common that might not be otherwise observable.

They do not rely on any prior knowledge or preconceptions about Parkinson’s disease, so we can discover entirely new signatures of disease.

The need for new signatures of Parkinson’s is underscored by the high failure rates of recent clinical trials for drugs discovered based on specific disease targets and pathways believed to be drivers of the disease.

The discovery of these novel disease signatures using unbiased methods, especially across patient populations, has value for diagnostics and drug discovery, even revealing new distinctions between patients.

The Parkinson’s disease signatures identified by the team can now be used as a basis for conducting drug screens on patient cells, to discover which drugs can reverse these features.

Sign up for our newsletter for more information about this topic.

Recent studies have found a major cause of Parkinson’s disease, and these vitamins may protect you from Parkinson’s disease, which are highly relevant to the current study.

Previous research has tried to find new treatments for Parkinson’s disease.

In a study from the University of York and published in Advanced Science, researchers made significant progress in the development of a nasal spray treatment for patients with Parkinson’s disease.

They developed a new gel that can adhere to tissue inside the nose alongside the drug levodopa, helping deliver treatment directly to the brain.

Levodopa is converted to dopamine in the brain, which makes up for the deficit of dopamine-producing cells in Parkinson’s patients, and helps treat the symptoms of the disease.

Overextended periods of time, however, levodopa becomes less effective, and increased doses are needed.

The team says the current drug used for Parkinson’s Disease is effective to a point, but after a long period of use, the body starts to break down the drug before it gets to the brain where it is most needed.

This means the increased dosage is necessary, and in later stages, sometimes, instead of tablets, the drug has to be injected.

Investigations into nasal sprays have long been of interest as a more effective delivery because of their direct route to the brain via the nerves that service the nose.

In that study, the team created a gel, loaded with levodopa, that could flow into the nose as a liquid and then rapidly change to a thin layer of gel inside the nose.

The method was tested in animal models by a team at King’s College London, where levodopa was successfully released from the gel into the blood and directly to the brain.

The results showed that the gel gave the drug better adhesion inside the nose, which allowed for better levels of uptake into both the blood and brain.

The team is now working to incorporate these materials in nasal spray devices to progress to clinical trials in humans. The approach may also be relevant to other neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s.

If you care about Parkinson’s disease, please read studies about a new early sign of Parkinson’s disease, and why exercise may help treat Parkinson’s disease

For more information about Parkinson’s disease, please see recent studies about this stuff in berries may prevent and reverse Parkinson’s disease and results showing common high blood pressure drugs may prevent Parkinson’s, dementia.

Copyright © 2022 Knowridge Science Report. All rights reserved.